The Radiohead album Thom Yorke wished he could rework: “I think the songs suffered”
Bands often become their own harshest critics once an album is released. While it’s tempting to believe you’re creating the next Abbey Road during the recording process, there are moments when the final product seems odd or disjointed. Despite Radiohead’s reputation for producing meticulously crafted records, Thom Yorke admitted they faced a significant challenge while working on Hail to the Thief.
Granted, most of Radiohead’s output tended to be the result of what they were hearing in their heads. Regardless of how much critical attention the record got once it was released, the band usually just tried to write songs that captured what they wanted to play rather than just trying to make something appealing to the larger market.
If there was ever a Radiohead project that could be considered dated, Hail to the Thief would probably be it. While Pablo Honey might suffer from being a product of its time more often than not, it still holds up as a decent meatheaded version of what the band could have been. On Hail to the Thief, the gloom of the Bush administration looms large over every single track, especially on the opening cuts where Yorke imagines a dystopian scenario for the future on ‘2+2=5’.
Then again, the one major problem with the album is that it’s far too long for anyone to really appreciate. Although 14 tracks is far from the kind of progressive tracklistings that some people were used to, it was still a bit of a slog compared to the airtight grooves on albums like Amnesiac and Kid A.
Before the record really had time to breathe, Yorke was already complaining about how the record was far too bloated, telling Spin, “Of all the records we did, I’d maybe change the playlist. I think we had a meltdown when we put it together. ‘There There’ is amazing, and ‘2+2=5′ is good, but as Nigel says, I wish I had another go at that one. We wanted to do things quickly, and I think the songs suffered. It was part of the experiment. Every record is part of the experiment”.
Still, that experiment was far from a failure on all fronts. The core of a good Radiohead album is in here somewhere, but there’s a good chance that some of the songs would have worked better as B-sides. It’s nice to hear a song like ‘I Will’ in its final form, but since they already made something of the chord progression on ‘Like Spinning Plates’, this just feels like a retread.
If they had decided to trim some of the fat off the album, we could have been in for one of the heaviest offerings that Radiohead has ever created. A song like ‘There There’ is one of the most ambitious sonic journeys they have ever made, and bringing back the guitars on songs like ‘Myxomatosis’ is borderline metal in some places.
Every good band knows how to learn from their mistakes, and when Radiohead made In Rainbows, everything was exactly how it was supposed to be. At only 10 tracks, this feels like a more concentrated version of what they were shooting for on the last album, with more grit on ‘Bodysnatchers’ and more heartwrenching moments on ‘Nude’ and ‘Videotape’. Despite being one of the greatest bands in the world, there’s something oddly comforting knowing that Yorke thinks not every one of his albums is perfect.
